


People Like Pendrick

by tronjolras



Category: Murdoch Mysteries
Genre: Canon Era, Fluff, M/M, No Plot, One Shot, and pure unadulterated fluff, just character monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 04:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15331797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tronjolras/pseuds/tronjolras
Summary: Pendrick could have lived out his life repeating that one moment, the smile and the laugh and the blush rising in Murdoch’s face as he realized Pendrick had stopped working altogether just to look at him.





	People Like Pendrick

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Different Style of Dancing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1359208) by [Cameo (CameoSF)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CameoSF/pseuds/Cameo). 



When James Pendrick first met Detective Murdoch, he had thoughts married men weren’t supposed to have. However, the dissolution of his marriage and continued encounters with the detective lead to more thoughts and after a time, action.

As it happened, the first time Detective William Murdoch met James Pendrick, Murdoch had some of his own thoughts that detectives weren’t supposed to have about their murder suspects.

In his workshop, Pendrick reclined back in his swiveling desk chair and appreciated Murdoch’s ability to concentrate on one thing entirely without entertaining distraction. In this case, it was carefully threading a wire through Pendrick’s latest prototype capitalizing on the recent breakthrough in controlling things remotely by radio waves and manually adjusting the brightness of lights. A remote control dimmer. Pendrick was sure this technology would reach more theaters, being particularly successful in cinema, and then in the home—the remote control part was just a fun challenge he set for himself.

In Pendrick’s inventing process, however, he could not help but entertain distractions. It was his nature, it was his charm, it was what teachers used to beat him with hickory sticks for.

He sighed and finally pushed aside the technical illustration he had stopped working on several minutes back. He tossed his pencil into its holder making it clatter against the tin walls.

Pendrick watched Murdoch’s eyes flit up for just a moment. He’s hadn’t meant to disturb him. Murdoch looked back down, then the corner of his mouth turned up in a confused and embarrassed sort of smile. “What?” he asked softly, a chuckle coloring his tone.

God! Pendrick could have lived out his life repeating that one moment, the smile and the laugh and the blush rising in Murdoch’s face as he realized Pendrick had stopped working altogether just to look at him.

Pendrick rose from his chair and hurried to the work table opposite the desk.

Murdoch watched him with an deepening wrinkle between his brows until Pendrick was beside him, sliding his hand around the tapered cut of his waistcoat, feeling every bump of the embroidered brocade and the warmth from Murdoch’s body. Murdoch’s lashes fluttered closed and his pale lips parted, expecting a kiss.

Instead, Pendrick pressed his lips into a thin line and bent down to look at the progress Murdoch was making with the battery. “We’re going to finish this tonight,” he said.

Murdoch’s eyebrows rose. “I thought you said at breakfast you wanted to go to bed early tonight?” There was an implied flirtatiousness and hint of disappointment, the latter being more intentional than the former.

“Maybe it was just a ploy to get you home from the station earlier,” Pendrick drawled, overtly flirtatious as he squeezed Murdoch’s side affectionately. He nodded in an absent approval of Murdoch’s nimble work. He stood back up and considered the zinc battery powered remote control that if all went as planned, would control the dimming of electric lights. “I honestly think that if we finish the prototype tonight,  test it this week and finalize the illustrations the week after, we could have the patent filed by the end of the month.” He said “we” though Pendrick only ever filed patents under his name, Murdoch insisted he want no more credit than a dedicated assistant would have. Pendrick agreed because it was what Murdoch asked of him. Love, he was discovering, could be simple like that sometimes.

As Murdoch returned his attention to the remote control wiring, biting his lip in concentration, Pendrick rubbed small circles on the silk back of Murdoch’s waistcoat. Despite his eagerness to finish the prototype, sleepiness was settling over him. The nearness of his lover, the warm, oppressive air of his workshop, and the dim light cast out by two lamps in the center of the room  only added to his fatigue. “Tea!” he declared.

Murdoch looked up, startled.

“We need very strong tea,” he explained.

Pendrick felt a little more awake when found the kitchen. The air was crisper there and he felt that he could focus. From boiling the water, to measuring out the leaves and filling the infuser, he did not let his mind wander.

He tried to be like Murdoch and find the most importance in near automatic rituals. But pouring the boiling water over the leaves into the teapot, releasing the pleasant aroma that promised efficiency and progress, distracted him. He thought of bringing the tray back to the workshop and finding Murdoch pliant and willing to forgo the bed for the work bench as if they were men much younger than they were. Then he imagined to find Murdoch working like a fiend, even more focused than when he left. This Murdoch would not even notice Pendrick’s return and Pendrick would be rewarded with several minutes of quiet appreciation.

Likely, Pendrick would return, goad Murdoch into a chair and make him take a break, even though he knew his mind didn’t need one, and they’d sip their tea in a companionable, domestic silence broken every once in a while with one man picking up a conversational thread and following it together for a bit until they put it back down again.

James Pendrick felt so much more like a husband to his William than he ever did to Sally. What a shame his one marriage had been to a murderess and not to this brave detective who did not care he was no longer a millionaire, who did not care that he was getting old, who did not care that most nights, he broke his once strict religious doctrine in the name of Love.

Sometimes, Pendrick found himself jealous of Murdoch. Murdoch had been in love before. Pendrick has never fallen truly in love until the middle of his life, with Murdoch. Of course there were dalliances, his university days sprang to mind—but Murdoch had Liza in his past and Dr. Ogden. Women who he loved and who loved him, who he would have spent his life if they were not torn apart by circumstance. Pendrick sometimes found himself wishing Liza was still alive, that Murdoch had married her when he planned and that they would have a litany of children and a townhouse in the city by now. Sometimes he wondered if Murdoch would be happier that way.

There was just something objectively more attractive about a wife and kids on a sunny street in the heart of the city than a disgraced former millionaire inventor and a homosexual relationship under constant threat of imprisonment and two years hard labor, designed to kill a man.

Murdoch deserved better, but Pendrick was what he had and Pendrick had to believe Murdoch was happy when he said he was, or else we was bound to go as crazy as Sally, and what an unappealing thought that was.  
Rummaging through the cupboard produced butter and half a loaf of brown bread that neither of them especially liked, but would accompany the tea well enough and further sustain them in their scientific pursuits.

Laden with teapot, bread, butter, cups and saucers, Pendrick found Murdoch exactly where he left him. Murdoch followed Pendrick with his gaze as Pendrick laid out the midnight picnic on the desk, shoving papers and miscellany out of the way as he needed the space. He poured out two cups of tea and sank into his desk chair again.

Murdoch stood and lined up his tools on the bench. “I’ve had an idea about the circuit, James—“

Pendrick pushes the cup and saucer into Murdoch’s hands. “Please wait until we’ve finished our first cup at least, darling,” he teased.

Murdoch accepted the tea and sat on the desk. “We don’t have to stay up if you’re tired,” Murdoch said generously.

Pendrick smiled, he was not so tired as he was before, but he was a little regretful for letting his scientific enthusiasm intrude on a more emotionally satisfying quality time with his lover. “I like watching you work,” he said, and it was the truth.

Once Pendrick worried (foolishly) that since Murdoch blushed so easily, the sight of his embarrassed smile and pink creeping over his face would lose its charm. It hadn’t yet.

Murdoch took a polite sip of the tea to test its warmth finding it too hot, set the cup and saucer down beside him and instead, cut a slice of bread and spread it with a thin layer of butter. “Thank you,” he said before taking a bite.

It must have meant something that a man who knew love so well chose Pendrick to spend his foreseeable days with. But people like Pendrick, who fell in love only once, never knew what it was. So he took it for what he thought it might be and was resolved for that to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Of all the Pendrick/Murdoch fics I've read, none have used Pendrick's point of view, so I decided to fix that with a cute little one shot.  
> Also, The Murdoch Mysteries hasn't been on US Netflix for more than a year and I only ever watched it once up through series 6, so really this fic is less a fic of the tv show and more a fic of CameoSF's wonderful "Dancing in the Light" series, though I'm pretty sure everything I've mentioned is canon. The biggest thing I consciously borrowed is them referring to each other by last name in narration, which I found so charming in CameoSF's series.


End file.
